Fast food is an amazing thing. And what’s more amazing is that soup is kind of the original fast food. Sure, it has to be prepared way in advance, but once that is done a meal is just a scoop away. Pho 24 has elevated the combination of fast food and soup to an art. It can be found in Vietnam, a number of Asian countries and even as far away as Australia and I paid a visit to one in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).

I went with the Dac Biet, which meant it came with three different meats instead of just plain old brisket. These were beef fillet, beef balls and beef brisket, all in a beefy broth. No cows were spared in the making of this soup. In almost an instant the pho was ready for a slurping.

Not the greatest of noodles.

Fast food or not, the broth was really pretty flavorful and while I added plenty of spice to it, that’s really just what you do with pho and it was not due to a bad base. The beef was more overcooked than I would generally prefer, but most importantly it was not tough, as such soupy beef can often be. The beef balls were, well, beef balls. I did not order the soup for these rubbery things because I knew they would be rubbery, but I simply couldn’t resist going all out on beef. Probably the only disappointment was the noodles, which were kind of soggy and seemingly overcooked.

Pho isn’t exactly my jam, but I thought Pho 24 did a solid job of putting some of that soup together. I’d prefer a hole in the wall kind of spot that throws tripe and tendon in there, but for someone just trying to make his way to tasty pho in Ho Chi Minh City I couldn’t complain.